EMC Centera Backup

[randyman]

We have a Windows 2003 server with TSM Server EE 5.5.2.1. We are implementing Enterprise Vault with an EMC Centera at the back end. This is all for email archiving at this point.

We want to backup the Centera in addition to the Enterprise Vault 8.0. How does everyone else backup their Centera? Do you use EMC's CBRM? Just looking for some feedback on how others are doing and their experiences.

http://www.emc.com/products/detail/s...ery-module.htm

Thanks!

[itcsge]

we use IBM content manager and we replicate to a secondary centera. doesn't help but thought i'd share...

[Jeff_Jeske]

We also have a Centera. We do not back this up but instead replicate the storage to the DR site and call it good.

[johansen]

hi,

backup of the centera is a big thing, because EMC doesn't provide a suitable software to do so with TSM. On the CBRM Host (installed with CBRM software on it) you might be able to backup the centera, but it's NOT possible to do a incremental / differential backup!!!! Have fun backing up 15TB with really good speed (because you cannot connect tapes directly to the CBRM host to do a lanfree backup perhaps).

You will not be happy to backup the centera with CBRM to TSM.
We have tried to backup our centera in the beginning but with more and more data on it backup began to fail because of "unhandled exceptions" of the cbrm software. Don't think that we received good support

Also CBRM software is as far as I have read no longer supported by EMC, so we have bought a second centera and planning to replicate the data; afterwords move the 2nd centera to another location and keep on replicating.

[randyman]

Thanks for the replies. Mgmt has not pushed the issue to backup up centera yet. I'm hoping that replicating to our offsite data center will be ok with them. Mgmt here LOVES tape, so, the challenge...err...opportunity...may be in my future.

[Cloudschatze]

In our environment, we also have a ~15TB Centera, and have had success backing it up to TSM through NDMP (with the aforementioned CBRM). While the performance is hardly ideal (~50-60GB per hour), full/differential filesystem backups are possible.

[dataarchive]

To all Centera users out there that are struggling with CBRM issues, which I believe is now an EOL product, or are looking for additional layers of data protection beyond just replicating to another Centera, which poses a significant risk of data loss and corruption that WILL replicate to the alternate Centera, my company can recommend two products

One is a Windows-based product that will replicate at a C-Clip level to a physical tape device or VTL, and the other is a Linux-based product that will replicate to only another server HDD, which you can then backup to tape from there at your discretion

Both products provide restore capabilities at the individual C-Clip/object level, a date range restore, or entire Centera restore

If you would like more information, please continue this thread


Thanks !!

[johansen]

The question is how fast you can backup more than 20TB of data. if you do that clip-per-clip to TSM this won't be fast I guess?!

[dataarchive]

Much of that depends on the content, but if this is a TSM application I assume you are dealing with scanned images, reports, and other "small" objects, so a 20TB backup may in fact
move as slow as 1TB per day (or slower)

Unlike traditional backup, however, because content on Centera does not change, there is no reason to perform "full" backups on a scheduled basis like you would for other servers

The way the product works is that you perform an "initial full backup" of the entire Centera, which may take several weeks to complete, but after that you would only append the newly
written data to the tape library on a nightly basis, essentially doing only incremental backups day forward

So, after the initial pain of a one-time full backup, the rest is a smooth ride...